Your Nerdy Best Friend

Whiteboards: Vyew and Twiddla

Let’s say you’re designing a new website with a committee, and you guys need to work together to find the right look. Twiddla is the perfect tool. Without registering or downloading anything, you can push a button, share a link and immediately be on the same page with as many people as you want. You can mark up a document or webpage together, share notes, and talk online with integrated audio. The basic version, which is quite awesome and does most of the things that most of us will ever need, is free.

Twiddla isn’t a screensharing site – you’re simply both seeing the same document or page and marking it up. You also can’t edit a document together, although you can write together with Etherpad. It won’t work on Flash or secure sites. You also can’t save your work if you have a free guest account, but you can always use Jing to save a screenshot.

Vyew has many of the features of Twiddla but goes even further. As with Twiddla, you can share documents, sites and blank pages to mark up and review. But with Vyew, you can also share your desktop and even take a screenshot to mark up. I also like the feature that allows you to add text and voice notes to a collaboration, and you can even reply to notes by others.

You can filter the collaborative pages by commenter to ensure that you can implement the suggestions that your board president gave you and ignore the dimwit on the team. (Note: If they’re the same person, you’re out of luck.) Vyew also allows audio and video conferencing and lets you share your work, even in the free version.

Vyew’s ad-supported free version allows up to 10 collaborators, and paid versions start at about $10 a month.